The Marksman #7: Slaughterhouse

The Marksman #7: Slaughterhouse, by Frank Scarpetta
December, 1973  Belmont-Tower Books

Peter McCurtin returns as “Frank Scarpetta” for another entry in the Marksman series, another one that’s super-heavy on action but barebones on plot and character. Unusually enough this one actually has a bit of background for Philip Magellan – another indicator that editor McCurtin was behind the tale. Overall though Slaughterhouse wears you down with endless action sequences.

As revealed in the previous volume (also courtesy McCurtin), Magellan has his roots in a carnival, where he was a trickshot artist. This volume opens with Magellan in St. Louis (again there is absolutely no pickup from previous books or any sense of continuity), where on the first page he bumps into young Tommy Brady, the son of Wild Bill Brady, aka the man who taught Magellan how to shoot all those years ago.

Wild Bill’s been laid up in the hospital due to a stroke for the past few years, but Tommy and his mom now run a carnival in nearby Florissant, Missouri. And wouldn’t you know it, the friggin’ mafia has been giving them trouble! Out of a sense of obligation to the old man, Magellan tells Tommy he’ll help him out. It should be mentioned that throughout the tale Tommy Brady has no idea who Magellan is these days, and indeed appears to have never even heard of the Marksman.

The carnage begins posthaste as Magellan and Tommy come across a pair of goons as they’re trying to cut the lines that hold up the main tent of the carnival. Needless to say, Magellan blows them both away, McCurtin really going to town on the gun-porn. There’s lots and lots of firearm and ammunition detail strewn throughout Slaughterhouse, and the gore factor is there as well, with plentiful descriptions of how bullets impact bodies.

The goons work for the infamous Morelli brothers (Giorgio and Lupi), who along with their underlings Vito Guardi and Tony Mambo run St. Louis. Vito Guardi appears to have had a run-in with Magellan in the past; at least this is inferred in the narrative, but it’s done so clunkily that I couldn’t tell if McCurtin meant it happened in an earlier volume or if Guardi is speaking of something that happened earlier in this volume. Anyway Guardi’s name seems familiar, but honestly these mobster names run together after a while, so I don’t know.

Given the tie-in with Magellan’s history, I figured Slaughterhouse might have a little more character or backstory, but gradually I realized the stuff with Tommy Brady and the carnival was just a convenient framework around which McCurtin could weave a plethora of endless action scenes. There isn’t even a reunion with Wild Bill Brady, and Tommy’s mom buys it in a scene where the mob comes back to the carnival when Magellan and Tommy are gone.

Instead the novel is all about action, to the point where it gets tiresome. The plot is basically this: Magellan runs into Tommy. Magellan tells Tommy he will kill the mobsters who are troubling him. Magellan proceeds to do so. That’s pretty much it. There are several elaborate action scenes, with Magellan unfazed throughout, but after a big confrontation with Giorgio Morelli (in which the mobster gets wasted) Tommy is captured.

Rather than play out the suspense angle, McCurtin instead has Magellan instantly figure out where Tommy is being held captive, climb into a building across from where the thugs have conveniently placed him in front of a window, and then blow away the guards. After which Magellan ropes over into the building and he and Tommy proceed to blow away all of the mobsters within!

McCurtin also fills a lot of pages with meaningless dialog sequences, like one interminable chapter that’s made up of banal conversation among the Morelli brothers and their underlings. Curiously enough there’s no sleaze in Slaughterhouse, and Tommy’s mother is the sole female character. The book is almost like an ‘80s version of the men’s adventure genre, in that it’s all about gun-porn and gore.

Anyway it all resolves exactly as you’d expect, with Magellan ruthlessly blowing away the surviving Morelli brother with his .44 Magnum, and then telling Tommy “see ya” before hitting the road. Like the other installments McCurtin has written, Slaughterhouse isn’t burdened by continuity – or much of anything, other than endless gun fights. However the Ken Barr cover is awesome!!